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While every case will be different, there are several broad categories if things that must be done to get business lines of credit. I’ll outline those categories here and go into detail in further posts.

You need a CFO with a 720+ FICO score.

You need to start or buy a corporation of LLC. You save a little bit of time if you buy but not as much as you could two years ago.

You need to acquire and use several small sources of business credit (credit cards, merchant accounts, etc.) and use them. In this step, you can acquire $50k – $300k in various small lines of credit (cash and trade credit).

You must show activity in the corporations bank accounts.

Once the corporation is 2 years old, showing activity and using your current business credit to raise your Paydex score to 80, you can start looking for the larger business lines of credit.

I’ve been talking to several companies who broker Business Lines of Credit. They all say that the minimum FICO for starting a business line of credit is 720. They all say that higher is better but they can’t get someone started if they have a lower FICO.

One company can start with someone at 680 but I suspect that they are creating personal lines of credit to build you up to a business line of credit. This isn’t a bad thing but it does add to the time it’ll take to reach your goal.

So, starting at 720 (or upon reaching it), they will start or buy a corporation. From there they will build up your Paydex through multiple small lines of business credit. Once the Paydex is built up, you are all set for the larger business lines of credit.